Saturday, April 8, 2023

Day 889 of GOP election denier hysteria (Trump Big Lie Clown Show Circus, Nevada edition)

 
Meet the stars of the
ATTACK Of the Clown Show zombies
 
Starring Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo
Headline:  Las Vegas Sun, 3/28/2023
In a statement, Lombardo spokeswoman Elizabeth Ray said by introducing the bill, the governor was making good on a promise of “common sense” election reform. 
Measures proposed in SB405, including voter ID, are practical, realistic, and supported by the majority of Nevadans — across party lines,” Ray wrote. “SB405 will help restore faith and timeliness in our election system, so that every Nevadan has confidence that our voting process is free and fair.” 
In response, Assemblywoman Daniele Monroe-Moreno, D-North Las Vegas, the majority whip in the Assembly, said the proposal was doing nothing but “emboldening election deniers.”

Colorado General Assembly
Rep. Dave Williams
HeadlineUSA Today, 4/46/2023
Similarly, election deniers were elevated to state GOP chair in Idaho, Kansas and Colorado, where former state Rep. Dave Williams, who insists Trump won in 2020, has promised to be a “wartime” leader. 
"Our party doesn't have a brand problem," Williams told supporters in March. "Our party has a problem with feckless leaders who are ashamed of you and ashamed of our conservative principles."

Adams Township clerk Stephanie Scott
HeadlineBridge Michigan, 4/4/2023
A small-town election clerk accused of stealing election equipment has become an unlikely hero among conspiracy theorists continuing to claim the 2020 contest was rigged against former President Donald Trump. 
Stephanie Scott, the Republican clerk of rural Adams Township in Hillsdale County, claimed she was trying to preserve election data to prove fraud. But some residents in the town of 2,200 are fed up with the drama and want to oust her through a recall at the May 2 election.

disgraced Surry County NC
election denier Timothy Dehaan
“In a written submission to the State Board in support of Mr. Hall’s complaint, Klein noted, “Faithful execution of the law by election officials is a keystone to our political system.” “If left unchecked,” Forestieri and DeHaan may have been the first of many board members throughout the state and across the political spectrum who “would undermine the credibility of our elections based upon their personal disagreements and own misinterpretation of the governing law they have sworn to support, maintain and defend.”

disgraced Surry County NC
election denier Jerry Forestieri
The State Board, in its motion to remove the members, found there were no irregularities in the 2022 general election or the March 7, 2023, special election in Surry County that would have affected any outcomes in those elections, according to its press release. The county board members based their refusal to certify their elections on court and State Board decisions they disagreed with. The State Board found Forestieri’s and DeHaan’s actions constituted “impermissible collateral attacks” on court decisions and directives from the State Board.

Congressional Primary candidate
Jeff "12 Percent" Buongiorno
Headline:  Los Angeles Times, 3/30/2023
The other presenter, former Florida congressional candidate Jeff Buongiorno, did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment. He said during the presentation that the information referenced came from copies, called forensic images, of production servers from three counties. He would name only one: Coffee County in Georgia. 
“We have multiple counties’ forensic images,” he said during the presentation. 
“We’re not going to name the counties.” Some of the images came from evidence in court cases, and he and Merritt obtained others on their own, Buongiorno said. 
Sometimes you have good Samaritans on the inside who care,” he said.

far-right whacko 
Joshua "No" Merritt
HeadlineLos Angeles Times, 3/30/2023
One of the [CPACpresenters, Joshua Merritt, acknowledged the criticism that followed the presentation. He told The Times he intended to pose questions through the presentation in hopes someone would watch the event and help answer them. 
“We’re just trying to do the right thing to make sure people have secure elections,” said Merritt, whose affidavit alleging possible foreign interference in the 2020 election was cited in suits Powell filed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. “And that’s been my only motivation behind it.”

Mike Lindell and Mark Finchem
Headline:  Governing, 3/27/2023
A couple of prominent election deniers are now talking about setting up their own voter databases — Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, and Mark Finchem, the GOP nominee last year for Arizona secretary of state. If they do get their efforts off the ground, it’s safe to say that Democrats won’t be rushing to join. Back in 2005, Kansas started a voter database sharing initiative called Interstate Crosscheck. Criticized by Democrats as a tool for targeting voters for arrest and riddled with security problems, the program officially shut down in 2019.


Texas State Sen. Bryan Hughes
Headline:  Governing, 3/27/2023
ERIC also sends information to states about eligible citizens who are not registered. Its critics say this is a distraction at best; at worst, they claim it’s an effort to pad the rolls with Democrats. They also say that it's too expensive. It costs a state $25,000 to join and then annual fees range from $15,000 to $74,000, depending on population size. 
“We do know, again, that the people running ERIC don’t share our worldview,” said Republican state Sen. Bryan Hughes, who is sponsoring a bill to pull Texas out of ERIC, according to a recording obtained by the Texas Tribune.


Matt Braynard
Director Look Ahead America
Headline:  Governing, 3/27/2023
ERIC is in trouble because of a series of complaints lodged by conservatives who claim it’s tilted toward Democrats. Last year, the Gateway Pundit, a right-wing site, published a series of posts claiming that ERIC received funding from liberal billionaire George Soros and was sharing voter information with groups on the left. “They seem to be partnering with other 501(c)3s that seem to have a left-wing agenda,” says Matt Braynard, who directs Look Ahead America, a conservative group that combats election fraud.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose
Headline:  Governing, 3/27/2023
In February, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose held a news conference in which he discussed ways the state was making elections more transparent and secure. One thing that’s indispensable, he suggested, was ERIC, or the Electronic Registration Information Center, a data-sharing effort among states. “It is one of the best fraud-fighting tools that we have,” LaRose said. “It’s a tool that has provided great benefit for us, and we’re going to continue to use it.” 
Well, that was then. On March 17, LaRose announced Ohio was quitting ERIC. It’s among a half-dozen Republican-controlled states that have left this year, including five just this month. As a result, election officials are worried that one of the most effective sources of voter information available to states — and a rare bipartisan success story over the past decade — has been undermined.

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